This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine, and more particularly to gaspath leakage seals for gas turbine engines.
Gas turbine engines, such as those used to power modern commercial and military aircrafts, generally include a compressor section to pressurize an airflow, a combustor section for burning hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine section to extract energy from the resultant combustion gases. The airflow flows along a gas path through the gas turbine engine. Along the gas path, there are many potential leakage paths, such as joints between mating components, that can reduce the efficiency of the system.
Traditionally, the leakage paths are addressed by the inclusion of physical seals, such as rope seals or W seals between the mating parts. Such methods, however, suffer challenges due to durability, FOD (foreign object damage), sealing effectiveness, cost, and design space/size restrictions. Some leakage paths are only 0.010″ between mating surfaces with no extra design space to fit a physical seal. Other locations are very close to the gas path where FOD is a real concern, particularly for fragile hardware like rope, or W seals. These restrictions often lead to designs where attempting to minimize gaps has often been a selected design criteria.